Odd Helicopter - Looking for ID

[munitalP]

Welcome to AFF Russ, thanks for the insight!

 

[straitman]

russ1,

Welcome to AFF and thanks for your informative post.

I am particularly intrigued by your comments that the transmission cannot fail as I would have thought that anything mechanical, particularly gearboxes can fail.

This is from someone who has had a main rotor gearbox fail in an S76, a tail (42deg) gearbox fail in a Huey and seen the results of a inter-meshing gearbox fail on a Chinook. (on a Chinook the blades overlap by 12ft)

 

[russ1]

Kmax trasnsmission
A very tough piece of mechanical equipment.
the transmision and masts installed with blades removed

 

[russ1]

Blades at rest, notice how close to the ground the back blade is, the man standing behind the tail section is about 5'-8" tall, the top of the cabin door is about 8 foot high and the top of the rotor head is about 13'-6" high
These blades are turning at low rpm, note how they flattened out and are higher off the ground, also note the distance bewteen the blade head and the ground - plenty of room to stand next to the cabin, the reason its dangerous (but can be done) to come up from behind when the rotors are turning is that you must either crouch to go unde the stabilizers or go around then, on the sides of the masts in large letters it says to approach from the front
when in flight the blades can actually bend up depending on the control settings how much load is on the blades
a fun belly view of a Kmax in flight

If you want details about every Kmax K1200 built and its current disposition go to: (this site may even list the reason for any crashes and you can verify if any were due to a transmission failure that allowed the blades to hit each other), of the 3 crashes I was associated with, one one due to a high velocity shear wind from behind (pilot serious injured, mechanic killed), one due to some mechanical failure (pilot died), and the third I don't know much about (pilot died).
The Kaman K-Max by Markus Herzig

Keep in mind, helicopter pilots are very courageous men, yes they have autorotion, but any number of situations and can make that a mute issue.

Now the mechanics are an all-in-one beed, they know every inch of their helis and know clutches, engines, sheet metal work, instrumnts, fire fighting equiment, communications of all types in and out of the heli, hydrolic systems, electrical systems, how to use all kinds of fantastically weird specialty tools, crew training instructor, crew chief and how to handle all the issues of managing people including food and lodging, haz mat cert, first aid cert, logging, driving any and all vehicles inclluding 1200 gallon fuel trucks etc etc etc (they can pull and replace a heli engine in about 4 hours), they can work in near blizzard conditions at 4000 ft above sea level or in muddy muck anckle deep in rain. They know all about generators, and other support equipment, they know how to handle travel arrangments for the entire crew anywhere in their native country and manage their own overseas travel to and from a work site, and in an emergency order and have shipped aircraft parts from vendor to work site.

 

[russ1]

I forgot to include info about the external seats on a Kmax, I personally have not seen one, or a picture of one, and I never did follow up to find the part number or contact Kaman about them. It may be that these seats are for military application in which case I would not have then listed in the parts catalogs I used.

airliners.net
Capacity
Accommodates pilot only but certificated with fuselage side mounted external seats (one either side). Designed to lift external loads such as Bambi firefighting buckets. The K-Max's maximum hook lifting capability is 2720kg (6000lb).